


Just To Watch Her Float Across the Floor

by sinuous_curve



Category: Bandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:52:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon comes to New York on the ripple of a band that never quite materialized. Six months pushing for that magic moment when things just click came to a quiet, unspectacular death with the drummer admitting he'd rather kiss the guitarist than play behind him and that was that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just To Watch Her Float Across the Floor

**Author's Note:**

> There are a bunch of people I need to thank. First and foremost to nova33 for an incredible beta that really took this fic to where it is now. If this is readable at all, it's because of her incredibly helpful suggestions. Also thanks to justranda for going over with a fine toothed comb and catching all my many and varied typos. I am incredibly indebted to these lovely people.
> 
> Lastly, this fic would not exist at all with simplemitosis. She was the one who convinced me to sign up, cheered me on, and for whom the very first germinating scenes were written.

Brendon comes to New York on the ripple of a band that never quite materialized. Six months pushing for that magic moment when things just click came to a quiet, unspectacular death with the drummer admitting he'd rather kiss the guitarist than play behind him and that was that.

Love's a tricky thing in all its forms, platonic and erotic and brotherly and all the mixed up mess in between, but Brendon decided a long time he was never going to stand in the way of it. Sermons he never quite believed in with the requisite fervor nonetheless left an indelible mark on his view of the world. Love your neighbor, love your mother, love your left hand and the person who makes everything swoop and dive in dizzy perfect circles. Just so long as you fucking love someone and may God strike him down the day he dares to judge.

It's twenty-two hundred miles between Vegas and The Big Apple and more crowded, stinking, sweaty Greyhound buses than he ever wants to think about again. Somewhere across the flat corn filled nothingness that is the country's middle, he spent six hours with a fat man's unwashed head lolling on his shoulder while an inconsolable baby screamed out its disapproval to everyone within earshot. Never again, please and thank you, and when he stumbles into the muted orange of one Port Authority, NYC, he wants nothing more than to kiss the grimy linoleum tiles in ecstasy.

Truth be told, chances are no one would really much notice or mind, but he restrains himself anyway.

He has a battered black backpack with one broken strap, knotted together as best he could manage at a bus station in Bumfuck, Nowhere, and a big green duffel bag slung over an aching shoulder. His guitar - the only one he didn't pass off to more than willing new owners - he keeps gripped tight in his right hand. Honestly, he'd rather lose the two hundred in small bills, crumpled fives and ones, in his wallet than the acoustic six string he got when he played in his first real band at sixteen.

He'd been two weeks out from leaving home in a fire of righteous indignation and determined fury and he was still living on couches without a job. But that's water under the bridge now, as they say, and nearly seven years gone from the present. He doesn't like to dwell on those last two years of high school and so, doesn't.

In either case, past miseries and trials aside, he's in New York now, with the faint smell of garbage and hot dogs from the corner stands.

His friend Jon shares an apartment with his friend Tom (and sometimes Tom's friend Sean, but Brendon's more or less used to a certain level of transience, so he's not too worried about it. A roof is a roof)

*

Jon and Tom's building is easily a thousand and six blocks from Port Authority and by the time Brendon drags himself around the corner, he's about ready to drop down dead of exertion. He's dragging the green duffle bag, ignoring the scraping sound the canvas makes against the dirty sidewalk. He's switched shoulders with his backpack a dozen times, waiting until the muscles of one side are cramping and aching so badly he's thinking about scooping them out with a spoon, and then flipping. His guitar is the only thing he's still carrying gingerly.

Brendon's got priorities and he accepts that.

He fishes his near dead phone out of his backpack standing underneath the crossed green street signs and wearily thumbs through the address book until he gets to J &amp; T. He punches the number and, damning all hygiene, plops down on the curb, ignoring the pointed looks the few pedestrians still out give him as they walk past.

"Are you coming, dude?" Jon answers and Brendon can't help a small smile.

It's almost three in the fucking morning and the city is still humming distantly around him. Never sleeps and all that. He catches his phone between his ear and shoulder and bends down to retie his shoe. "I'm here, asshole. Sitting on the corner waiting for some gallant young bro in flip flops to help me carry my shit up."

Jon heaves out a put upon a sigh. "You have wanting ways. We'll be right down."

Tom yells something in the background, but Brendon doesn't quite catch the words. He snaps his phone shut and tucks it into one of the pockets on his backpack.

The muscles along his spine and radiating outward to his back and sides are singing with exertion and the promise of a bone deep ache when he wakes up in the morning. His feet are killing him and, unless he misses his guess, he's going to have a fine set of blisters rubbed up on either heel and along the side of his feet at the joint of his big toe. Even so, he feels an odd measure of contentment pushing tentatively out from the back of his mind.

He thought, sort of, that he'd miss the bright lights and neon glow of Vegas once he was gone. For the moment, Brendon realizes he thought wrong.

When Jon's hand crashes down on his shoulder, Brendon jumps a little, flailing a fist out automatically and connecting a glancing blow on Jon's hip. "Assault!" Jon yells, ruffling his hair and plopping down beside him. "Way to be grateful, Urie, considering I'm letting you sleep on my couch."

Brendon snorts. "You wouldn't let me sleep in the gutter."

Brendon is not entirely sure when he met Jon. It was through Pete, probably. Maybe at a basement show for one of the ten thousand bands Pete bums around with while he looks for the magic combination that's going to get him the acclaim he craves. Hell, maybe it was just in Pete's apartment after one of the basement shows, during those dizzy hours when the door is open to anyone who walks past and red plastic cups multiply of their own volition and fill with a never ending supply of good stuff, okay stuff, and shitty stuff they drink on the principal of being starving artists.

"Too true," Jon says around a smile. He slings an arm over Brendon's shoulders and pulls him into a half hug. "Welcome to The Big Apple, kid."

Tom comes walking up a much slower pace, still wearing his boxers and tee shirt with no shoes. He rakes a hand through his hair, failing to tamp it down in any sense of the word and eyes Brendon's pile of crap. "I call the backpack."

"Fucker," Jon says easily.

"I call the guitar." Brendon pats the case, rubbing his thumb over a peeling sticker for a band he's pretty sure only existed for the one night and the one show.

"Fucker," Jon says harder, but he's still smiling. "Come on, you ungrateful ingrate."

Fifteen minutes later, Brendon's stuff is piled on the end of Jon and Tom's couch, his guitar propped up in the corner with their instruments. Brendon has a brief minute of wondering when the fuck Jon took up drums and where the fuck he got a kit from, but it's past three and he's exhausted. He falls asleep to the low hum of Jon telling him stories and Tom chuckling along.

*

Brendon wakes up with bright sunlight pouring in through the windows.

The sashes are thrown open and cars rumble and screech on the streets below, blaring their horns in loud complaint. It's relatively early, but Brendon's tee shirt already clings to the center of his chest and the humidity of the day thumps heavily against his skin. He feels like air heavily slinking into his lungs is at least half water, maybe more.

He rolls off the couch and stumbles across the scarred wooden floor to the small bathroom. The shower only spits out tepid water, no matter how much he twists at the rusting handles, which suits. There are half a dozen bottles scattered on the floor, in varying stages of empty, and he takes a couple minutes to pop open the caps an inhale each smell. He settles on something orange and opalescent, in a bottle that waves and bulges. It seems like vanilla, oddly enough, and Brendon hums as he rinses the suds from his hair.

Most of his clothes need to be washed, but he finds a pair of fraying jeans and a white tee that smell relatively clean crammed in the bottom corner of his backpack.

The apartment's empty and quiet as Brendon would expect with tissue paper walls and the front door isn't locked when he leaves.

*

There's a girl sitting on the steps of the next building over in a white dress made of eyelet with a guitar across her thighs and bare feet tapping out a rhythm on the concrete. She has a wash of blond hair falling over her shoulder that catches the over-bright sunlight and reflects back gold and white. The song she's playing catches at the back of Brendon's mind, faintly familiar, and he thinks he could probably start humming along with half a chance.

He leans against the pillar at the base of the stairs and folds his arms over his chest, watching her.

She's got the case flipped open on the bottom step and Brendon reaches in his pocket, coming up with a handful of lint, a gum wrapper, and a crumpled five. Cash is a funny thing, in the way it slips through his fingers the fastest when he needs to hang onto it, but it's not every day he sees a pretty girl playing for spare change in front of a brownstone. He pitches it in and she smiles, a little wry around the edges, and tips her chin in acknowledgment.

The hot, mid-afternoon sun beats down on Brendon's scalp and neck and shoulders, even through the fabric of his shirt. Sweat pricks up along his hairline and between his shoulder blades. Eventually is coalesces into a bead that lazily meanders down the length of his spine. It itches like hell, but he doesn't twist around to scratch. He wants to watch her.

The song ends with a softly trailing series of chords and her hands press against the strings, damping out the last of the sound.

"What do you think?" she asks, cocking her head and looking at Brendon with sparks in her eyes.

*

Her name is Greta and she actually lives in the same building as Jon and Tom, she just sometimes plays on the steps of the one next door. She has a friend, "Vicky, I don't know where she went," who has an apartment there and thus Greta lays her claim on the steps by proxy.

"You're pretty good," Brendon says. He's still leaning against the pillar and still sweating. His shirt's damp through and his skin's beginning to get that too tight prickled feeling on sunburn. He doesn't care, because Greta's eyes are trained on him and they are very deeply green and brown in the same expression.

Greta laughs, low and wry. "I live for your approval, nameless one."

"Brendon."

She inclines her head. "I live for your approval, Brendon."

From across the street a girl jogs up onto the sidewalk, darting between the cars. She's wearing a little dress in purple and battered Chucks held together with duct tape and hope. Brendon watches momentum carry her up two stairs, where she collapses down beside Greta, letting her dark hair fan out against the light concrete. "Having fun?" she asks.

"Oodles," Greta says, finally stilling her hands on the strings of the guitar and setting it aside. She picks up the girl's hand and starts idly running the tip of her finger along the creases in the girl's skin. "Vix, this is Brendon."

Vicky, as Brendon takes her to be, raises a dark eyebrow and gives him a once over while Greta keeps at reading the secrets of the universe in the crenelations of her palm. "You belong to Tom and Jon," she says, laughing. "I've heard of you."

Brendon tips an invisible hat and pulls a laugh from both girls. He counts that as a win. "I do belong to them, you're right. Who do you belong to?"

Vicky shrugs. "Myself."

Greta looks up and the sun glances off the sheaf of her hair. It's so unreasonably gold and Brendon wants very much to run his palms over it and see if it's warm as it looks. "I'm looking for someone I want to belong to," Greta says.

That's interesting.

 

*

"She showed up like two years ago? With this guy named Bob." Jon's sprawled out on the couch with one arm and one leg dangling off the side. "They had a band type thing with these two other guys, but it didn't last long and then Bob went back. Wherever they came from. I don't remember."

Brendon's cross-legged on the couch. He plays piano chords to his calves; it's a gesture he's had ever since he learned to play the piano. Every now and again he wonders whether he's just playing songs he already knows or if the secret to musical success lies in what his mind unconsciously directs his fingers to do.

"Why did she stay?" he asks.

Tom comes out from behind the kitchen counter with a beer in one hand. "Probably because she didn't want to go back, dude. Why do most of us stay after our bands break up?"

Jon laughs at that. "It's true. If you have to be a poor, bandless, starving, pathetic excuse for an artist, it's better to be poor, bandless, starving and pathetic in New York than poor, bandless, starving and pathetic wherever it is you came from."

"More expensive, though." Tom drops into his chair and takes a long pull from his beer.

"Mmm." Jon makes a noise of assent and flicks his eyes back to Brendon, sitting on the floor. "Why do you ask?"

"I saw her playing on the steps next door," Brendon explains. He feels oddly hesitant, for no reason he can really explain. A blush, entirely unreasonable in its heat, flushes across his cheeks and nose and he rubs his palm against the skin. "She seemed interesting."

*

Friday night, Jon and Tom take Brendon to get thoroughly smashed at the pub down at the end of the block. "Call it an introduction to the neighborhood," Jon snorts, but he's only half teasing.

Brendon doesn't get carded once the entire night, which is funny in and of itself. Expected, but funny. The bartenders are a mismatched, but oddly synchronized pair with the unlikely names of Ryland and Saurez. They have a dichotomous vibe that makes Brendon laugh when they pass him beers, warning that they water them down for those of questionable legality.

Three months out from unquestionable legality, Brendon snorts at mock seriousness in which they hand down the words. He's been drinking in bars since he was seventeen and in bands with enough talent or combined attractiveness of members to warrant courting from labels.

An hour in, maybe two, Brendon's knocked back three and is feeling no pain. Tom vanished with someone named Ryan with a letter attached that Brendon's since forgotten and Jon wandered over to a corner with a pretty brunette who has him smiling like he means it while she plays with the short curls at the nape of his neck and steals sips from his drink. Brendon keeps himself near the bar, tapping his foot along to the duo playing guitar onstage and feeling a strange kind of promise.

He's homeless and jobless, but he can breathe again and that's something.

He doesn't see the beautiful girl sliding up the bar until a hand lands on his wrist and he turns to an eyeful of blond hair twisted up into some kind of loosely complicated knot and hazel eyes. Greta No-Last-Name is a vision in the proverbial little black dress that clings to her curves and leaves her shoulders bare.

"Fancy seeing you here," she says around that same knowing, I-can-keep-a-secret grin and doesn't move her thumb from the pulse point steadily throbbing away beneath the delicate bones and flesh of Brendon's wrist. Her nails are chipping off light purple polish and that's more charming that Brendon can attribute to any kind of logic.

"Fancy seeing you," he replies, wishing that his brain wouldn't get so thoroughly tripped up by her brown eyes and the citrus tang that follows her like a promise.

"Did you lose your roommates?" she asks, leaning one elbow on the bar.

The taller of the two bartenders, Ryland, saunters up with a beer in one hand and passes it off to her with a moment of shared, acknowledging smiles. Greta takes a deep drink and licks the foam that stays behind on her upper lip. Brendon would do that little task for her, if she'd allow.

"Sort of." He waves his hand vaguely over his shoulder, in a gesture that encompasses both the men's room and Jon's secluded little patch of darkness off the shadows of the stage. "They found more interesting people to talk to."

Greta nods and raises an eyebrow. "More interesting? I doubt that."

The compliment, however little and implied, sends a flush of proud, nervous, flummoxed heat through Brendon's insides and he has to took his head and take a calming drink of his beer, draining the rest of the glass until he can see a distorted image of the bar through the bottom. He sets it down with a clunk and other bartenders, Suarez, whisks the empty glass away and replaces it with another. Brendon's drinking on Tom and Jon's tab; he's allowed to be liberal with his consumption.

"Are you here with anybody?" he asks and, while it's not the most perfect segue into asking if someone else has already been lucky enough to lay some small claim on Greta, it works well enough.

Her eyes crinkle at the corners with amusement and she drags the tip of her index finger along the rim of the bottle. "A couple friends. That's all."

If his heart leaps and grows three sizes, he can't be held accountable for that.

"Are they going to be missing you?" he asks.

Greta's responding laugh is long and loud. She pushes a few errant strands of blond curls away from her forehead and casts a wry look about the rest of the bar. "I doubt it. They tend to keep themselves entertained, even without me gracing them with my presence."

It's not necessarily being chosen, but it's something and Brendon would sing if he could.

*

Brendon is drunk.

No. Brendon left drunk behind about three shots and two glasses of beer ago and has passed into the realm of so trashed everything seems painted in blurry smears and he can't stop giggling. Which, if he has to be this wasted, he takes some small comfort in the fact that one, he has Greta tucked under his arm and two, she's laughing along with him, eyes glassy bright and beautiful.

She is so beautiful.

Somehow they ended up on the outside of the bar, though Brendon is more than half certain they were aiming for the back room and not outdoors. It's okay, though, because he remembers walking to the place to begin with, which means that it's possible to walk home. He has to remember which way home is first, but he can do it. He can totally do it.

Greta has her hand snaked around his waist, fingers tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Brendon doesn't honestly think it's meant to be a come on. He's got his own fingers curled around the strap of her dress, but that's an accident. He doesn't know how his fingers got there. He's just. You know. Trying to hold himself up.

"Which way?" he asks, almost breathless with laughter. He lost Tom and Jon, but they'll get back home. They're all grown up and shit.

Greta swoops out her hand in the vague direction of across the street. "Thataway." She blends the words into one exhalation of sound and, for some reason, that makes Brendon want to kiss her, to see what the inside of that wonderful, wonderful mouth tastes like.

She sang, a few hours back. Just one verse of one song, because Vicky told her she had to and because Vicky had friends who said the same thing. Her voice sent goose bumps up Brendon's arms then and now the rise up again in remembering.

"What's your last name, Greta?" he asks. It seems oddly important as he remembers her sing. Brendon wants most in the world to tell anyone and everyone who will listen about the sweet songs that bubble up out of her and fill the room.

"Saltpeter. What's yours, Brendon?" She turns her head up, eyes bright and pretty in the faint sodium glow of the streetlamp.

"Urie."

"Urie." She echoes his last name like she's tasting it. "I like it."

The praise is loose and drunk and goddamn high and somehow, but for the grace of God, they make it back to their building collapsing slowly in on each other.

*

Sometimes, when the moon's in the east and the sun's in the west and the balance in the bank is right, Jon pulls shifts at a café a few blocks away for a couple hours pay and tips. He leaves at the ass end of dawn, which looks oddly like ten in the morning, in his best jeans and a button down with the sleeves pushed up, ruffling Brendon's hair over the arm of the couch and calling over his shoulder for a promise that Brendon won't burn the building down.

Brendon sleeps in snippets and patches for another hour, then creaks himself up off the couch and starts rubbing at the knot in his back from the broken spring. Tom never came home, but that's hardly cause for alarm. He's probably over at Ryan's place and the two of them will wander their way over when they realize Ryan doesn't have food or anything to cook with.

Alone, the apartment borders on strange and overly quiet. It feels full of whispers and ghosts.

Brendon takes a fast shower, then dresses and finds his shoes and wallet.

In a strange gesture of hopeful optimism he thought was long gone in his young, cynical self, he catches his guitar case by the shoulder strap on his way out and whistles walking down the stairs. The whole building is just to the left of too still, echoing where it hasn't before and sighing for a sense of unexpected loneliness.

Or maybe Brendon is imagining things. Either is entirely possible.

Squinting into the sunlight as he emerges from the lobby, Brendon gets luckier than he really thinks he deserves and finds Greta standing on the sidewalk in blue shorts and a white tee shirt that dips down low into her cleavage. She has a sweater tossed over one arm and her guitar held in the opposite hand.

"I was waiting for you," she says, cocking her head. "Imagine that."

"Waiting?" Brendon echoes, trotting down the stairs. "How did you know I was going to come down?"

Greta smiles. "I didn't. Come on."

Which, really, brooks no other explanation.

*

The park she takes him to is Central Park and Brendon has a split second of tourist awe before she drags him in and steers him along a veritable maze of paths. In the middle of summer, with school out and the temperature not yet risen to the ridiculous heights of midday, it's full of people. Truth be told, even if Brendon hadn't brought his guitar, he thinks he could probably be more than content to just sit and watch the ebb and flow of humanity.

There's old people and young people, families and singles, every color and shape. Joggers run past, thudding to beats blasted through headphones. A trio of kids walk a massive, shaggy dog past, laughing and fighting over who gets to hold the leash. There are even handful of eternal old men and women sitting with their newspapers and knitting.

Greta leads him to en empty bench and gently pushes him down. "Here," she says and drops down beside him.

In tandem, they open their cases and pull out their guitars. Greta snaps her own shut again, but pushes Brendon's flopped open in front of them. She reaches into the pocket of her dress and pulls out a couple crumpled ones and a handful of change and tosses them in with a secret, shared smile of understanding.

In Vegas, Brendon never really got around to busking. He was always too busy rehearsing and chasing down flighty connections that turned out to be hustle and exaggeration. Busking was for the people who didn't have the drive and determination to try and legitimize their music.

He was maybe kind of a tool.

Greta strums once and sets to minutely tightening the strings into tune. "What do you know?" she asks.

Brendon copies her strum and winces at the far more discordant clang that jangles out of his guitar. He hasn't been playing, though he doesn't really no why. The idea was, since the band didn't come together like it was damn well supposed to, that he would pick up and start whittling his way toward a solo career. Plans and plans and plans he had, but now that he's here, they all seem a little bit dusty.

He just wants to play in the sunshine with this girl.

"What can you play?" he returns and Greta rolls her eyes, but laughs.

"I can play a lot. I have a good ear and, if you can tell me the chord pattern, I can fake it." She plays each string individually, letting the notes ring out with a satisfied smile.

Brendon finishes tuning and strums a few times, quick, just to make sure the sound is more along the lines of acceptably sweet. He knows he's not as precise as she is, but that's okay. "I'm the same," he admits and they share another one of those smiles, passing secrets between them.

"Okay, okay." Greta starts up and Brendon almost drops his guitar and throws his arms around her beautiful self right then and there.

Everyone and their mother knows Let it Be, but Brendon loves the song despite that and he picks up easy.

They sing together, which he didn't expect. Greta starts, which he's beginning to sense is a theme between them, but Brendon can't not sing along and he's pleased, if not really surprised, to hear the harmony that springs up between them.

He thinks he has never liked a version of the oft-covered song more.

They play until it's too hot to even really think about sitting outside anymore. They've picked up about twenty bucks, mostly in spare change from the ice cream vendor on the corner and Greta laughs as she scoops up the coins in her palm. "Not bad, for a first timer," she teases.

Brendon picks up a quarter and tosses it in the air. "Call it."

Greta puts the rest of the change on her pockets and sets his guitar in the case. "Heads."

"Heads," Brendon echoes, slapping the coin over on the back of his wrist. "Sadly no, my dear lady. Here we have a tails."

"Well, goddammit," Greta says in a parody of regret, standing and hefting both guitars up. "What do I lose?"

Brendon takes his guitar and bats his eyelashes at her. "Your heart."

It's only a half joke from him, but her laughter is sweet enough anyway.

*

Summer wears on and the heat turns up with every day that slips past.

Brendon takes the playing his guitar late into the night, picking out random strings of melody that tend to peter into frustrated silence. It's like he can sense songs just beneath the calluses on the tips of his fingers, waiting for the right moment to come bursting out. But the moment doesn't ever seem to come and he's left with a hundred puzzle pieces that all belong to different wholes.

When he can take the awful, saturated oppression of the apartment, he thunders down the stairs and finds Greta. Sometimes she's on the steps of their building, sometimes the steps next door, and sometimes he has to make his way to the park and wander the paths until he catches the resonant twang of her guitar.

Greta plays barefoot on benches, tapping her knuckles against the body of her girl to set the rhythm. Brendon is welcome to join in, to pick up the chords and play along, but she's never going to wait for him to find his fingers.

"Sink or swim," she says, sweat gleaming across her forehead as the temperature sneaks past ninety-five. "Play or listen, boy."

*

"It's not the heat," Jon says, voice slowed down to a molasses crawl out of his chest. "It's the fucking humidity."

He's sprawled on the floor in cut off pajama pants, spread eagle and sweating in beads down his chest and temples and neck. The windows are flung open in desperation, searching for summer breezes the gods of weather and mercy haven't seen fit to provide.

Tom's in the easy chair, knees spread as far as they'll go to keep the skin of his thighs from sticking together. He's forgone pants entirely, settling on faded boxers, with a dripping beer held apathetically in one hand. Brendon's fairly certain the bottle's empty at this point, because he's never yet seen Tom take forty-five minutes to knock one back, but he can well understand the lack of desire to get up and grab another.

Brendon shifts on the couch, legs draped off the end to catch the tepid breeze the one rattling metal fan provides in its complaining circuit around the room. The weak burst of warm air brushes against Brendon's calves, then flutters Jon's hair, then blows on Tom's boxers in order.

Then cycles back and begins again.

"How old is that thing?" Brendon asks? He never bothered to put a shirt on after he got out of the shower, settling on wash thin, cut off, falling apart sweats.

Jon rolls his head up and takes a long look at the fan. Whatever color it was when it came out of the store is long and totally forgotten. It's given over almost completely to rust and Brendon suspects it's running more on sheer force of will than any mechanical merits.

"I have no idea," Jon eventually says around a sigh. "I think it was probably here when we moved in, because the last tenants didn't take it with them."

Brendon blows out a long sigh that briefly lifts his bangs off his forehead. "You might want to think about replacing it at some point."

Outside, the city itself seems muted, beaten down by the sheer force of the temperature. The screeches of the tires seems tired, the cab drivers only apathetically honking their horns at the few brave souls who dare walk up and down the sidewalks. Across the street, at the little deli, Brendon can just make out the big, old-fashioned Coke thermometer pinned up beside the door. It looks suspiciously like the bright red of mercury has been pushed up past the point of triple digits.

In Vegas, Brendon was no stranger to heat, but that was desert heat, dry enough to suck the water from your skin. But at least it never tried to drown you without the momentary relief of cooling liquid.

"Hey, Bren," Jon says in that same slow syrup voice.

"Mm?"

"I'll give you five bucks to go get ice from the deli."

Brendon has a moment of serious consideration.

He go to the deli would mean getting up and shoving his flip-flops on. Gabe, the man who owns it, doesn't put a whole lot of stock in no shirt/no shoes, but he doesn't do deliveries and Brendon's not entirely sold on the idea of moving. Truthfully, he's not entirely sure he could peel himself off the fabric of the couch.

"You're gonna have to sweeten the deal," Brendon says apologetically and Jon lets out a groan.

"I'll give you five bucks to get ice and I'll continue to let you sleep on my couch."

Which, hey. Is hard to argue with.

With a hard, whined exhale of breath, Brendon pushes himself up and shuffles to the pile of battered sneakers and mismatched sandals lying in heap by the cracked open front door. He shoves on a blue one for his left foot and brown with orange decoration for his right, reaching into Jon's wallet and extracting a crumpled ten. If he's going to go, he's going to get something cold and carbonated for the trek back.

"Back soon," he calls over his shoulder and Jon grunts. Tom tilts his empty bottle in weak salute and Brendon starts thumping his way down the four flights of stairs.

*

He makes it back across the street with a bag of ice settled in his hip like a kid and a half empty bottle of Coke in his free hand. It does down good and cold and beats back the harshness of the day, if only a little bit.

There are a couple kids with water gun chasing each other up and down the sidewalk, stopping every couple minutes to reload with a hose snaking out a first floor window. Brendon raises a hand in surrender and laughs when the youngest, a towheaded thing of maybe four, hits him square in the chest with a puissant little water pistol that doesn't have enough pressure for Brendon to hardly feel the water against his skin.

An older brother/cousin/friend offers to give Brendon a real shakedown with his bright orange and grey supersoaker, but Brendon declines. "I don't want to slip and die on the stairs," he explains, which strikes the kids as reasonable enough.

Inside the building, the first flight of stairs goes easily enough and the second is harder. The third is a misery of his one hand and hip going numb from cold while the rest of him gasps out harsh, panting breaths and drips with sweat. When he gets to the top, he decides he has to have a rest and falls down hard on the bottom step of the fourth flight with a resounding thump. It echoes down the hall at his feet and the hall to his side and Brendon doesn't really care.

He falls back on the stairs, arms spread, and tries to force his heart to slow down into something more like it's natural rhythm.

"Hey, pretty," a voice says and he can't jump, though his nerves make a valiant effort in coordinating the right firing of signals. He's too damp.

Standing in the door of number 33 is golden goddess herself, Greta, in a flimsy white dress that clings to slope of the hip she has cocked out as she leans against the frame. Her hair's frizzed up into a cloud of curls that stick damply to her neck and temples.

"Hey," Brendon says. His tongue feels thick and clumsy. "Your air out, too?"

Greta laughs wryly. "In this building, there's no such thing as working AC. It's all a vicious lie."

Brendon snorts, but it's the pragmatic laughter of sadly undeniable truths and they both know it as they look at each other. Greta runs a hand through her curls, momentarily lifting the mane of hair off her neck. Like before, the urge he feels to bury his face in the bleached strands is deep and powerful, resonating up out of his belly and into his chest.

There is something entirely visceral about the way he reacts to Greta.

"Want to come in?" she asks, jerking her shoulder back toward the rooms beyond.

"I." Brendon swallows. "I'm supposed to take the ice back to Jon and Tom. So it doesn't melt before they do."

"They can wait," Greta says and her voice shimmies and shivers up out of her chest to dance across Brendon's skin. It's one hundred and three degrees Fahrenheit, according to Gabe's trusty thermometer, but Brendon has a smattering of goose bumps on his flesh. "Come on."

In the end, when it comes to this beauty that makes Brendon want to fall down on his knees in adoration, Jon and Tom don't have much of chance, and he follows more than willingly.

*

Greta's apartment is one of the one-room loft deals, with a kitchen area at one end, a living area in the middle, and bedroom off the other side. There's a bathroom tucked in the back corner, jutting with unabashed awkwardness into the rest of her space.

The kitchen is covered in mismatched stacks of clean plates and glasses, some with little chips and imperfections, but Brendon has always found the flaws of things the most interesting part. The walls have hundreds or maybe thousands of pictures and articles and words clipped from magazines taped up, tacked up, and glued up. Her couch is dark purple and her bed is a mattress on the floor with a heap of tangled blankets shoved off and half a dozen pillows scattered around.

The fridge hums loudly when Greta opens it, pulling out a pitcher of cold water with a flourish. "Want a glass? We could maybe even sneak some of those cubes and get it really cold."

"You're such a rebel," Brendon teases, setting the bag of ice down on the counter and tearing a small hole in the top corner with his nail. He picks up one cube and pushes it into his mouth straight away while she pours. Her chosen glasses are thick, ceramic mugs in complimentary shades of orange and red. They look hand painted, but Brendon doesn't put a whole hell of a lot of stock in those small touches.

Most department stores have caught on and peddle authenticity.

"Thank you, pretty," Greta says with an impertinent little smile, scooping her hand into the bag and dumping generous amounts of ice into each mug. "Cheers."

Brendon accepts his and they clink their rims together, then drink in silence.

The water almost burns going down it's so cold and it makes something deep inside Brendon's chest and stomach distantly ache. He almost misses the desert of Vegas and that heat, so different from New York. He and Ryan, back in the day, used to wait until the sun went down and blessed cold fell, then sneak up onto his room and sleep on warm shingles in their boxers and nothing else.

But Ryan went to Chicago and Spencer followed and Brendon's here and he's okay.

Greta's watching him with frank, appraising interest.

"Did you know," Brendon says inanely, "that you use the same letters to spell Greta that you use to spell great?"

They stare at each other for a moment that stretches on almost the point of awkwardness, when he'd have to apologize for the bad, uncomfortable joke and she's have to conjure up a pitying laugh.

But no, the sound to bubbles up out of her chest is shocked, amused, pleased giggles and Brendon is surprised and not when she sets down her glass, curls her hand in the waistband of his pants, and says, "Come here, Brendon."

*

Brendon's sprawled on his back on Greta's mattress, naked as the day he was born, covered in cooling sweat, and feeling like he's got to be glowing for the sense of contentment radiating out along his nerves to the tips of his fingers and toes. The sun's fallen down in the sky, casting the room in shades of bruise purple and orange, tinged with red in the shadows grown long on the walls.

Greta, just as naked as he, lays on her side, head propped up by an arm crooked at the elbow. She smiles, running fingers through the tangles in her hair. It's even softer beneath Brendon's curled fingers than he imagined.

She runs a hand over her side, tracing the dip of her waist and the swell of her hip, down the line of her thigh until he fingers can reach no further. Brendon reaches out with the hand nearer to her and cups the weight of her breasts in his palm, gently rubbing the pad of one finger over her nipple. She shivers a little in loose, warm, aftershocks and smiles at him.

"I'm glad you're here," she says softly.

It's easier than Brendon would have expected. Less like a first time and more like two people coming together after circumstance has forced them apart. Her body is beautiful and he wants to spend more hours than he already has mapping out the planes of it with his hands and mouth, kissing the freckles and moles and scars and tasting the salt of her cunt.

Greta presses her palm to the center of his chest, just hard enough so maybe she can feel the echo of his hear thumping away beneath his ribs. "I'm glad I'm here, too," Brendon says.

There's more to their words than the surface meaning, but Brendon isn't going to push. He's happy, and that's not something he's really had in spades recently.

"Good," Greta says, almost to herself. "What are you thinking?"

Brendon glances around the room, to the pictures on the wall and blankets shoved off the bed. He looks at the small, worn seat pretending to be a couch and the old TV sitting on a stand made of painted plywood and cinder blocks. There's the old fashioned fridge, whirring and humming, and her diner uniform draped over the back of a chair. Their mugs are still sitting on the kitchen counter, beside a plastic bag slopping back and forth with the weight of water.

He looks and her and says, with as much gravity as he can muster. "The ice melted."

Greta laughs. "They can suck it up."

*

Greta walks him back to his apartment, "So you don't get lost, kidnapped, or attacked," and somehow their hands go from knuckles bumping when they take steps in sync to fingers laced and swinging gently back and forth from the momentum of their bodies. Greta's still barefoot, wrapped in a loose shift that hints and teases at the curves of her body without ever really showing more than that.

Brendon, on a whim, bends over and kisses her temple and earns a smile, surprised and pleased at the corners.

"Are we a we now?" he asks.

It's a little weird to be the one asking the questions and not the one fielding them. In Vegas he usually had something he needed to be doing that tended to preclude the inclusion of another human being to his life, but it happened every now and then. He knows how to handle a girl looking up at him with big, hopeful eyes. Less so how to be the one looking with something almost desperately wanting throbbing gently in his chest.

Greta pauses halfway up the flight of stairs and Brendon stops alongside her. She doesn't let go of their fingers. If anything, she squeezes a little bit tighter and looks at Brendon with honest, uninhibited consideration.

He remembers what Jon and Tom said about the guy named Bob she showed up with and wonders, but doesn't ask. Everyone is entitled to their own past, he is no different and neither is she.

"I think," Greta says carefully, "We've always been a we, Brendon Urie."

She stands up on her tiptoes, popping one foot out just like the do in all the best black and white movies, and kisses him. Their hands never part, but she does curl one hand around the back of his neck to pull him in closer. She takes like mint from her toothpaste and strawberries from her Chapstick and Brendon kisses back with all the fierce joy he has.

When they get to Jon and Tom's apartment, Tom sees them first and, for a long moment, just stares. "Seriously?" he says as Jon comes out of the bedroom, half naked. Jon pauses, leaning against the wall and breaks into an easy smile.

*

Thunder's been rumbling all afternoon as the heat of the brightest part of the day segues into late afternoon. It echoes, building upon itself between the skyscrapers and apartment blocks until the foundations seem to shudder with the force of the sound.

Brendon spent the afternoon in the park with Greta, sitting on a stone bench with their guitars and a fedora of hers upturned between their feet. They picked up about sixty bucks in a little over three and half hours, which is decent enough pull for a day where the air isn't shimmering above the sidewalk, it's something liquid and heavy enough to drown the unwary.

They split fifty/fifty and get ice cream on their way back to the building. Greta picks some kind of cherry Popsicle type thing that stains her lips bright, brilliant red and sets little lines of pink between her teeth. Brendon gets a good, old-fashioned chocolate ice cream cone and chases the sweetness with kisses between licks. Her tongue flashes out, swiping against his gums and that's never been sexy before, but is now.

Greta is a compilation of things that weren't true, but have become so.

He maybe loves her.

They're in Jon and Tom's apartment with the TV turned on low and rolling lines of static, probably from the thunder. Jon pushes at it with his toe, grumbling under his breath, and Tom swirls the rabbit ears in wide, erratic loops that do nothing except nearly put out his eyes. Brendon has his head in Greta's lap, her hands toying with the rapidly growing strands of hair on the back of his neck and fuck if he's moving.

Thunder crashed through the apartment and a breeze picks up the curtains, tossing them in wild, romantic arcs through the still air.

Everything feels charged, the oxygen pushing in and out of Brendon's lungs and dance of Greta's callused fingertips against his scalp. Her hands are something magnificent to be pliant beneath and he catches pad of her thumb between her teeth and sucks it in.

"Piece of shit," Jon says, pulling a deeply unimpressed fate. He kicks at the screen and his toe leaves a trail through the dust on the glass.

Greta eases her thumb from Brendon's mouth with a soft pop and looks up. "Maybe it'll rain and we won't care if the TV doesn't work."

Tom flops back down in his easy chair, made so by the imprint of his body from so many afternoons and evenings spent whiled away within the fabric embrace. "That's really fucking optimistic."

"Maybe." Greta draws her thumb down the line of Brendon's jaw and smiles at him, secrets in her hazel eyes that pass between them and them alone. "But that's not such a bad thing."

*

It's some time between night and morning, when the numbers on the clock don't really seem to match the darkness. Brendon's on his stomach with one arm pinned underneath and the other shoved beneath the pillow. The sheets got shoved down at some point in the night, after he and Greta fell asleep, and are rucked around his hips.

He shivers.

"Pretty." Greta's voice floats out of the darkness and one nail scraps down his spine, sending shockwaves of sensation radiating out along the nerves. Brendon shudders and presses his face into the pillow, away from light and consciousness. "Wake up, Pretty."

Brendon grumbles and turns, cracks open his eyes and catches the sight of her face illuminated with blue tinged light. "Hm?"

She smiles and bends down, nipping at his earlobe. "It's raining."

That's enough to have Brendon pushing himself up on the mattress and turning toward the window. His room only has one small square of four panes tucked off high and awkwardly in one corner. Light streaks in, broken and fractured by water streaming down across it. Belatedly, he registers the steady, roaring pattern of drops thrumming against the roof and the walls.

"Jesus, Mary, and motherfucking Joseph," Brendon breaths out and Greta laughs, sliding her arms around his neck and pressing open mouth kisses bump of vertebrae just below the base of his skull.

"Take me outside, Pretty," she says, low and rough and little bit wild. "I want to fucking dance in this rain."

Brendon, through some feat of strength and coordination he's fairly certain he'd never be able to replicate no matter how hard he tried, stumbles to his feet with Greta's arms around his neck and her long, bare legs wrapped around his waist. They're both in underwear, Brendon's got faded boxers and Greta has a tank top and underwear, and he doesn't give a shit, because the heat has broken and he feels like he can breathe again.

He thunders down the hallway, passing a sleepy eyed Tom half out of their apartment, and finds Jon already on the stairs, shoving on flip-flops and whooping with laughter.

"You are saint and a goddess," he yells to Greta. "Fucking saint and goddess."

Greta joins in laughter, pushing herself higher on Brendon's back and raising one arm in wild exultation. "Fucking right, Jonathan Walker!"

The three of them run down the stairs, passing other residents and picking up a crowd of sweaty, beaten down people who have forgotten what it's like to breath air and swim in water without it feeling like the force of a vengeful god is trying to grind you into a puddle on the pavement. Brendon has a faint worry in the back of his mind that it's all a false alarm and just one of those five minute showers that trick and tease, but when they get to the lobby, it's pouring down hard enough for the rain to bounce back up off the sidewalk.

Brendon laces his fingers with Greta, watching her run across the tile of the lobby with her hair streaming behind her and the night neon light of the city casting her skin in a myriad of beautiful colors. She squeezes hard and they burst through the double doors and into the night and storm.

Water slams into Brendon's skin with an almost overpowering physical force and he lets out a cry, caught somewhere between joy and relief and love and fear. Greta matches him, standing on the sidewalk and the street fills with people who were half convinced they were going to die from the heat.

"Brendon," she says, and within the word are a hundred things that Brendon can feel punching into his chest, coalescing, and expanding outward into the night.

Brendon pulls Greta close, so their chests push together, then wraps his arms around her and spins and spins and spins until they're both drenched and laughing, maybe crying, and alive.

*

The thing about Greta is how the little confessions build up between them until Brendon realizes, with a start, he's given her a pretty complete sketch of the whole of who he is.

She's heard the story about his family and the choice they didn't really think their dear, darling baby boy would ever make. Brendon will never be able to completely describe what it looks like to walk away and see your mother crying over your shoulder on the porch. The sound the front door makes when it slams shut and just how heavy the silence of an invisible umbilical cord cut is.

But she hears the rough outlines at three in the morning when they're tipsy on wine coolers and hard lemonade and kisses his cheeks, running her thumbs over the bones beneath his eyes. Words don't matter in that moment, just the press and feel of her skin and the whisper soft slide of her dress coming off and puddling on the floor.

Maybe it's not a good thing to take comfort in her breasts pressed to his chest and her legs wrapped loosely around his waist as they sit on her mattress on the floor, but Brendon does anyway.

And in return?

In return he gets the story of Bob with the red hair and freckles and dreams as big as the Illinois sky the pair of them grew up under. She never calls it puppy love or first love, the one that swallows you whole and spits you back out a little bit broken and a lot wiser, but Brendon can read between the lines and the gestures of her hands.

He doesn't know if it's what she wants in return for that piece of herself, but he presses his nose to the rise of flesh in her pelvis, hands steady around her waist. He pushes his tongue into the most secret part Greta has and takes his cues from the tightening of her hand in his hair and the little cries.

*

Greta and Jon are playing on her keyboard, plucking out a dozen different melodies and laughing at each other as they do. Greta takes the low half and Jon the high and it's not exactly music tinkling out from the electronic keys, but it's sure something. Their knees bump together as they sit cross-legged on the floor with their heads ducked together.

Brendon's on the couch behind them with a notebook spread out open on his knees, covered in scraps of melody that don't seem to want to form into songs. He hasn't written any music since he came to New York. At least, not anything that he consciously sat down to record and perfect; it's all been meandering songs played for Greta at two in the morning when they're naked in bed and deeply in awe of each other.

Jon hits a plunked false note and Greta laughs. "That was bad, Jon. That was bad. Brendon, tell him how bad that was."

"Pretty bad," Brendon agrees easily as Greta looks over his shoulder and catches his eye. They share a smile that passes conversations that don't need the formalization of words. She smiles, scrunching up her nose, and Brendon blows a little kiss.

Jon knocks his elbow into Greta's side. "Traitor," he says in a laudable attempt at withering, but there's too much deprecating amusement for there to be much weight.

"Here." Greta reaches over his left hand and presses her index finger to the proper note that rings sweetly in the apartment. "Much better, Jonny."

Brendon shakes his head and smiles to himself as Jon retaliates by reaching over to her keys and pressing the wide swath of his palm to a thudding imitation of a chord. Greta makes a noise of despair and Jon cackles; Brendon turns back to the half scribbled notes that have mutated into something much closer resembling daydreamed doodles than anything else. He draws a quarter note, then another that connects at the end of the stem. He ends up with something that looks a little bit like a flower, a circle of notes connected, and he thinks vaguely that he's like something like that tattooed over his heart.

Corny as that sounds.

Greta and Jon have moved onto something that sounds a little bit more like an actual song and Brendon gives up on music and tries for some lyrics. He has a notion, half formed and silly in his own mind, to write a song about Greta, but all the metaphors that make sense before he writes them down are only stupid on the page. People have already compared a pretty girl to sunshine and that's insignificant a phrase when he's talking about her.

Calling Greta a supernova makes it seem like she just makes him come, which has some element of truth in it, but it's too tawdry. There's no in between, to the gentle warmth of sun or the burning heat. Greta is both and neither and language is frustratingly lacking sometimes.

fuck you, English, Brendon scribbles and sets his pencil down.

The phone in his pocket buzzes and he jumps, sending the pencil skittering off his notebook to clatter onto the floor. Greta and Jon don't notice, still pressing out real chords and melody that's actually got a little swinging catchiness to it. Brendon pulls his phone out of his pocket (it was turned off for two months and he keeps forgetting he managed to scrape together enough park playing money to turn it back on) and presses on, catching it between his ear and his shoulder.

"Hello?" He keeps his voice low. He likes the song.

"Urie? Fucking finally, dude. We were beginning to think you were dead." Pete's voice crackles over the line, thick with Vegas static, and Brendon very nearly drops his phone.

"Hey, Pete." He sets his notebook aside and pushes up off the couch, very nearly falling ass over tits as he stumbles over the back and lands on the floor with a thud. Greta sneaks a glance over his shoulder and he waves his hand. She shrugs, raising an eyebrow, and turns back to the keyboard.

Brendon shuffles into the hallway and leans against the short span of wall between the bathroom and Tom's bedroom.

"How's New York?" Pete asks. It's too easy to picture the wide smile on Pete's face, that half manic one that sends his voice edging into a place where dreams are easy to touch and nothing will ever fall apart. People don't have to grow up around Pete and Brendon never really got used to that sense of possibility. Even so. He hadn't realized he missed it a little.

Brendon scrubs a hand through his hair. "It's good," he says, but the inadequacy of that description twists his mouth into a frown. Good doesn't quite capture the sense of settling he's found in a city torn between rotting and rebirth. "How's Vegas?"

Pete brays out a laugh. "Guess who came back?"

"Who?"

"Fucking Spencer and Ryan."

That's a punch to the gut he wasn't expecting and Brendon sucks in a hard breath that burns and scrapes going down, like his throat is coated in sandpaper and ground glass. He left Vegas because Spencer and Ryan did and that band, The Summer League, was the one that had every chance of making it big, but didn't. They wanted to be together in the Windy City, where hipster music dreams come true.

They asked Brendon along, but he wasn't willing to follow love that he was never going to be a part of.

"How are they?" he asks carefully.

There's a moment of silence that lasts a beat into awkwardness. Brendon sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and starts chewing on the patch of skin near the corner that nearly healed. "They're good," Pete says eventually. "I mean, fucking disgusting with the PDA, but good."

Brendon nods, though Pete can't see the gesture.

"Why are you calling me?" he says, before he has a chance to think and rethink the words. "I mean, I do appreciate the update. But why now?"

"A label wants to sing the Summer League, version two point oh," Pete says and his voice is dripping with excitement. "We've got Ryan on guitar, Spencer on drums, Patrick's singing and I'm doing my bass."

The first thought cuts deep, that they'd want to rub it in his face. But it's Pete and Pete's a douche and sometimes an asshole, but very rarely deliberately cruel when his head is mostly screwed on correctly to his shoulders. "That's great."

"Sort of." There's another pause and Brendon wants to go through the phone and punch Pete.

"Sort of? What does that mean?"

Pete huffs out a chuckle. "We've been playing with a couple different guys in lead guitar. Trick can do it, but he doesn't really want to, and Ryan doesn't really like trying to cover two parts on his own. We need another permanent member on guitar."

"Oh," Brendon says.

It makes sense.

*

Greta doesn't keep any lamps in her apartment, so all Brendon can see of her is the faint, smudged shadow of her head rising falling between his legs. It's not the view that's important, he supposes, just the sensation of her mouth around his dick and the rising tide of heat centered low in his belly. Brendon curls his fingers in the sheet tossed haphazardly across the mattress, says, "Greta," and comes.

She swallows, which is an oddly intimate act coming from her, and for a long moment as he wanders through the lazy haze of aftershocks, the only thing he can really think about is the pulse of her shoulder against the inside of his thigh and the shuddering moan that filters through the darkness when she brings herself off.

He'll reciprocate later, when he can think again.

Except, really, he hasn't been able to stop thinking about Pete and what he said (what he offered) even as Greta crawls up the bed and settles down beside him. She licks her lips in a bit of a tease and casually throws her leg over his thighs. Brendon automatically shifts his arm so she can lay her head on his bicep and starts idly coiling a strand of her hair around his finger.

"Are you going to tell me what you're thinking?" Greta asks eventually. Her breath ghosts out along his skin. "Or are you gearing up for some kind of guessing game?"

Brendon huffs out a laugh.

Vegas was the thing he always managed to skate around, sketching his hands wide and vague as he talked about the three years between walking out and getting on a bus. There's too much contained in those halcyon months. Ryan and Spencer becoming RyanandSpencer and the band that fell apart, but now wants to resurrect itself and falling in and out of love a hundred times in a hundred places.

He was looking for something back then, between shifts at a smoothie place and getting the damned diploma he actually lost track of somewhere along the way.

Justification, maybe, for the innumerable and inexplicable sacrifice he made by choosing the faint hope of music over the solid reality of family. Brendon is almost entirely certain they wouldn't take him back now, even if he came crawling up the perfectly manicured walk on his hands and knees and kissed their shoes and begged with all the force on conviction. Probably because, in their righteousness, they would sense how much he didn't really mean it, because the world he found gave him cause for sorrow, but never real regret.

Fuck. Maybe all he really wanted was an acknowledgment of the weight of the sacrifice he made, but that's too hard a thing to ask of anyone, especially Ryan fucking Ross.

"My friend Pete from back in Vegas called," Brendon says eventually and the words feel strange on his tongue. "He and a couple other guys have a record deal."

"Hey." Greta flips up a few fingers in lazy celebration. "Good for them. You jealous?"

She has a bluntness to her that still catches Brendon off guard. "No. They're. They're looking to add another guitarist to their permanent lineup."

Greta goes still at that and Brendon knows the entire rest of the conversation has already been scripted, now they're just reading lines. She pulls her hand back and tucks it along her front, fist under her chin. "Lemme guess. They're asking you?"

"I'd have to be back in Vegas in a week."

"Huh."

She pushes up off the mattress and pads across the floor toward the fridge. When she pulls the door open, Brendon has a long moment of seeing her body backlit, swathed in the buzzing glow of the light inside. It makes her skin seem too pale, bloodless white and his chest contracts hard. Greta pulls out a bottle of something, maybe juice and maybe harder, and unscrews the cap. "You should do it," she says.

Brendon doesn't know why that hurts, but it does. He nods assent and, though he's gotten in the habit of sleeping with his limbs entangled with hers, he somehow ends up back on Jon and Tom's couch as morning light breaks over the sky scrapers.

*

Pete answers on the third ring, his voice sleep rough and bleary. "Whosit?"

Brendon's sitting in the window seat, picking at a loose thread in a hole on his pajama pants. Jon's gone off to pull a couple shifts, with rent sneaking up on being due, and Tom's having one those stretches of days where he forgets to come back from Ryan's house. They'll turn up when they run out of booze or food. "It's Bren," he says, tucking the phone between his ear. "Pete, it's Brendon. Wake up."

There's a series of thuds and shuffles on the other end of the line, punctuated by a drawn out yawn. "Hey, Bee Urie. What's up?"

"I've been thinking about your offer."

It's been twelve hours, Brendon realizes, and he has to bit back a giggle at that particular little realization. He still hasn't mentioned a damn thing about it to Jon and Tom, but he can't particularly imagine they'll mind. He hasn't been able to contribute much in the way of rent and all he does is take up valuable couch space.

"And?" Pete says. Brendon can sense the held breath.

"Yeah," Brendon says, forcing a smile that Pete can't see. "Yeah, I'm in."

*

The neon night-lights of the city cast a silver tinged glow on the room and Greta's skin.

She's standing beside the window in her panties with a bottle of wine held loosely in one hand, swaying to a song playing in the back of her head. Her hair falls down in front of her shoulders, over her breasts, and the soft pink of her nipples pea through the strands. She has a smear of purple on her collarbone and another on her rib, in a faint echoed reminder of Brendon's ministrations.

She says she's not mad. In fact, she's happy to see one of them actually inching a little bit closer to success.

Jon and Tom were less enthused, but they hid it well.

Brendon is still on the couch in his boxers. "Hey," he says softly, "Hey, Pretty."

"Hi there." She sets the bottle down beside the couch with a soft clunk of glass on wood, then eases her way to sit across the span of Brendon's hips.

Her panties are white and slightly translucent from the damp gathering of sweat and want between her thighs. Brendon can see the shadow of her curls and a low, easy thread of heat pushes deep into his belly and up his spine. Greta tosses her head, letting her hair fly for a split, immortal second, before settling behind her shoulders. Her breasts look heavy and full and feel just slightly swollen when Brendon reaches up to cup them in her palms.

Brendon rubs his thumbs across her nipples and shivers at the low whine that shimmies up out of her throat at the touch. "Don't stop that," she murmurs and Brendon is more than willing to oblige.

They've already gone once before on the unforgiving wood of the floor with Greta on her back and Brendon caught in the circle of her legs and the inward pulling ease of her thighs. Even so, he's half hard curved along the crease of his thigh and he knows, with her palm, he can go again.

"You're beautiful," he says.

Greta smiles, eyes half closed. "Want me?"

The answer to that has never changed and will never change and Brendon answers in a way that precludes words. He pushes his hips up to the peak of the v of her thighs. Sometimes he imagines he'll never get enough of the whole of her, her scent and taste and laugh and smile and, and, and.

She reaches down and pulls her panties aside, slipping a pair of fingers up inside her cunt for a moment to slick the way and lay a finger on her clit. Her eyes slide shut involuntarily and Brendon shivers. He circles a hand around his dick and pulls in an erratic rhythm, just enough to coax his dick back to full hardness.

Greta lifts herself up on her knees and moves forward an inch or two until she's lined up. She takes hold of his dick by the base and brushes the head against her clit and then her entrance.

Brendon expected, in his heart of hearts, for this thing to stop now that he has another bus ticket with his name on it and a date three days away for his departure. The fact that is hasn't must mean something, but fucked if he can figure out what it is with her body tight and hot around him. He lifts his hips to meet her and the slap of skin echoes in the apartment.

She fucks herself, more than anything, completely in control of what passes between them. Her hands end up on top of his on her breasts, pushing his fingers and directing the motion. Greta's eyes are squeezed close and Brendon wants to ask her to open them, but he can't. He doesn't honestly feel he deserved that concession from her.

He's leaving.

Brendon comes first with a soft broken noise and Greta follows. They don't talk, but they do end up lying together, side by side, though not really together.

*

Brendon wakes the dull, colorless light of very early morning and Greta's fingers tracing patterns along the indents of his ribs. Her eyes are closed off, sunk inside her own head and, though it distantly tickles, Brendon makes himself hold still underneath her touch.

Up along the very bottom to where his rib cage comes together at his sternum, then along the line to hollow of his throat. She fans her hand out, palm pressed against his skin with her fingers spread out out over his collar bone. For a moment, she presses down hard enough for Brendon to feel a faint sense of pressure creak down along places where cartilage holds everything together, and when she releases, she doesn't pull her hand away.

"What are you thinking?" Brendon asks softly.

His words seem to hand tangible between them, ghosting out along the tangled mess of her curls and the swell of her hip. There was a blanket draped over their bodies when they fell asleep, but it's gone, piled on the floor in loose folds.

Greta has goosebumps on her upper arm. Brendon eases her closer, but holds back the usual kiss he would press to the space between her eyebrows. It seems untoward, in the moment.

"Why do you make music?" Greta returns, brows creasing slightly.

Back when Brendon was in high school, his parents asked him a variation of the same question every time they found him practicing guitar instead of studying for a math test. He had a store of glib answers, for the girls and the drugs and booze and the money. They pissed off mom and dad, as was the goal and Brendon played his cards close enough to the vest for them to never honestly suspect it was because he didn't have a good answer.

When he left, his mother asked him with tears in her eyes if music was worth this? And Brendon answered yes, even if it lacked the confidence he wanted the word to have.

Time's proven him right, but still. He doesn't know why.

"I always have," Brendon says eventually, frowning slightly. "I can't not, I suppose."

Greta pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. "For money?"

"I never made that much at it," Brendon chuckles dryly. The sound thuds flat and he chokes it off, shifting just enough so that they're both laying on their sides, facing each other.

"Why do you want to go?" Greta asks.

And that, really, is the crux of it all.

It's too many things, Brendon thinks. It's a mix of unfinished business and desperate want to reclaim the band that wasn't and the question that damns too many souls, "what if?"

"Pete wouldn't ask unless it was important."

Greta frowns. "There are other guitarists, Brendon."

Brendon feels inadequate beneath the weight of her gaze and easy answers trip to his tongue and die away before he can give them voice. There are other guitarists. There are studio musicians, for fuck's sake, and most people wouldn't really notice that a song belonging to a band with four members actually required five people to cover all the parts.

He's pretty and he knows it, know that Pete's knows and knows that Pete knows that he knows. Or something like that. Brendon has his own level of undeniable attraction, but the kind of band Ryan and Spencer came back from Chicago for isn't built on faces alone.

"What if I don't go?" Brendon says, looking at her shoulder. "What if I don't go and they get famous and go multi-platinum and I lost my chance?"

On some level, Brendon isn't actually surprised when Greta pushes herself up, crawls over his hip, and stands. She has a robe on the floor, some gauzy thing, and she slides it on, twisting her hair into a knot at the base of her skull. "You wonder too much, Brendon."

*

By the time it's actually morning, Brendon's back in Jon and Tom's apartment with his guitar across his lap and no song forming beneath his fingers.

Jon shuffles out of his bedroom with mussed hair and the faint vestiges of sleep still clinging to his eyes. He scrubs at them with the heel of one hand and looks at Brendon with his head cocked. "I thought you were with Greta."

Brendon strums and the chord sounds discordant, even though he knows he has the right strings pressed. "I was."

Yawning, Jon stumbles over the couch and sits down, pulling his feet up cross-legged. He's wearing a faded tee shirt with holes in the armpits and at the cuffs, spattered by bleach spots and stretched out at the neck. It's an old relic of 504plan merch, with a tree house screen printed on the front and the names of the members lined neatly beneath.

"Do you ever miss it?" Brendon asks, jutting his toward Jon's chest.

Jon glances down, catching his fingers on the hem and pulling the front away so he can better see the design. "I miss playing with the guys, sometimes. I miss the gigs when people started to sing along." He shrugs.

Brendon plucks out Ode To Joy. It was the first thing he ever learned to play on the very bottom two strings. It sounds high and quivering as more and more morning light floods in through the windows, suffusing the room with a warm glow. Brendon feels warmth at his back.

"I won't be playing my music," he says.

The songs for The Summer League (version two point oh) are already written and recorded. He'll be a fill-in, until the next album. Assuming there's a next album.

Jon raises an eyebrow. "True. Happens that way sometimes."

With a sigh, Brendon sets his guitar aside. He has a headache throbbing between his temples and no spark of divine inspiration and understanding he really hoped his trusty old girl would bring. Even the most well rehearsed and beloved songs came out thudding and flat. "Would you change your past, if you could?"

"Bren." Jon chuckles softly and stands, ruffling Brendon's hair and looking down at him. "Too early for philosophy. But. No. I wouldn't."

Brendon expects an explanation, but doesn't get it, and counts Jon's vote in the vast and pressing category of who the fuck knows?

*

Brendon goes out busking alone.

It's not unheard of, but it's sure as hell not common, and he feels a little bit like an impostor when he settles on his and Greta's bench with an upturned baseball cap at his feet. His pockets are empty of change, but he finds two or three falling apart ones in his guitar case and tosses them in. Greta always puts in four dollars and seventy-five cents. Because it's lucky.

Out of the apartment, the songs sound a little bit better, but still not as good as they should and certainly not as rich as they would with Greta's steel string to back him up.

Maybe it's not entirely about the music.

The thing is, Brendon stopped believing in fairy tales when he was a kid, but the truth of the matter always boiled down to the simple fact that people fuck up constantly and you can either forgive them or lose all faith in humanity. Mice don't ever come to save your ass, they take bites out of it because they're starving, and fairy godmothers are probably off getting smashed on cheap vodka because people have such a bad habit of wasting their wishes.

Brendon never wanted to be a Disney princess, because that meant he would never have to look for that one perfect someone.

Greta's not perfect.

Brendon starts up Let it Be and sings long quietly. A woman with a stroller drops a handful of change into his hat and offers him a slight smile that Brendon returns. He keeps on, hands forming the chords independently of conscious thought.

Greta's not perfect, but she makes him smile and laugh and feel settled in his bones.

A drunk (In front of a club at three in the morning in Hollywood after a gig when someone tossed a bottle at his head and Ryan got sucker punches in the bathroom) once told him that all music has an inspiration. And if you're fucking stupid enough to walk away from that once you've found it? You don't deserve the songs.

Brendon finishes the song and doesn't play another.

*

The subway is a little bit like a maze, no matter how many times Jon patiently sits down and tries to explain the letters, numbers, and colors. The lines always look like a handful of spaghetti tossed out over the map and never seem to settle into any kind of rational system.

Sometimes, regardless, Brendon feeds two crumpled dollars into the ticket machine and goes into the hot, rumbling belly of the city, gets on the first train, and rides until he's lost thoroughly lost and a million metaphorical miles from anything he knows.

It's easier to think with the tracks rumbling beneath his feet and people swaying around each bend. No one looks at anyone else and, if he listens hard, he can hear the thudding beats of a dozen different songs in a dozen different ears floating along the quiet. Brendon mouths along with the songs he recognizes and makes up words to the ones he doesn't.

Maybe two hours later, maybe five, he looks up and realizes that somehow he made it back to the station he started at.

*

Two days slide past and Pete calls him twice, but Brendon doesn't answer.

His stuff stays scattered around Jon and Tom's apartment and his backpack and duffel stay on the top shelf of the closet. Even so, he gets in the habit of shifting things around into piles that get dissembled after twenty minutes.

Greta comes up and Brendon goes down, but they don't fuck. They sit in the same space and breath the same air and Greta is waiting for an answer that Brendon doesn't have yet.

"I love you," Greta says out of nowhere one night. They're sitting on opposite sides of her apartment.

Moonlight comes in and casts her face in silver. The curves of your lips rewrite history, Brendon thinks in quotation. Her hair's loose around her shoulders and her skin seems to glow.

She's never said that before.

Brendon stands and crosses the room, feet padding softly on the hardwood and he lays a hand on her wrist and nothing more. "I love you."

*

At three in the morning New York time, Brendon picks up his phone and punches in Pete's number. It rings four times before he answers, voice loose and languid and edged with the residual hint of a laugh just ended. "Fucking finally Brendon Boyd. I was beginning to think you got murdered in the fucking subway."

Brendon's sitting the couch in the darkness.

Tom's curled up in his chair, asleep. Jon's on his side with his feet poking into Brendon's thigh and his head pillowed on his arm. And Greta, unlikely, unreasonable, undeniable Greta is on the floor with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair falls over her face and Brendon knows as soon as he hangs up he's going to get down and push it away, kiss her.

"No, I'm not dead," Brendon says, hushed.

Pete brays out his donkey laugh. Brendon, almost unwillingly, has to smile at that. "Well, thank fuck for that. When are you coming out?"

Brendon bought a ticket and had it taped to the fridge for three days, wondering if he would get to the point where he could look at the smeared print of letters and feel excitement alongside everything else twisted in the pit of his stomach. A record, tangible and in his hands, that he got to play every night for paying fans. A band that was actually signed and sealed and not just pipe dreams.

Didn't happen.

"Pete," Brendon says. "I'm not coming."

There's a long beat of silence, inhaleexhale inhaleexhale, and Pete says, "Why not?"

The complete answer is a volume in and of itself of feelings that don't have cut and dried words in any language Brendon speaks, trying to explain the impetus to do what your gut says is right instead of doing what your head wants to be right.

In the end, he looks at Greta and says, "I'm in love with a girl and I pick her."

And the funny thing is? Of all the answers Brendon could have given, that's the single one that Pete will respect.

He laughs, if a little brittle around the edges. In that way, Brendon knows he probably won't be hearing from Pete for awhile and Brendon feels oddly and deeply at peace with accepting that trade. "Well, fuck me, Bren. And good luck."

Brendon hangs up and exhales for what seems like a long, long time.

*

It's still dark.

Brendon's on the floor beside Greta, breathing in her scent and sensation. "Greta."

Her eyes flicker open, unfocused, then settle on Brendon. She smiles and Brendon's heart breaks and reforms and expands. "Hi," she says.

"Come play with me," Brendon says. Their guitars are by the door.

Greta's eyes are soft and knowing, she bends down for a kiss. "Okay."

**Author's Note:**

> [art by](http://community.livejournal.com/inlipstick/23232.html#cutid1) brandyxcyanide  
> [art by](http://community.livejournal.com/inlipstick/22784.html#cutid1) candidlily
> 
> [mix by](http://community.livejournal.com/inlipstick/22635.html#cutid1) quietplains  
> [mix by](http://community.livejournal.com/inlipstick/22436.html#cutid1) just_marzipan  
> [mix by](http://community.livejournal.com/inlipstick/22060.html#cutid1) simplemitosis


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